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BBC: Another Jerusalem Terror Attack, Another Headline Fail

Simon Plosker
November 5, 2014
12:00 am

Reading time: 2 minutes

Jerusalem has suffered another terror attack. In similar fashion to a previous attack, a Palestinian has driven a car into a crowd of Israeli pedestrians before being shot dead by police. At the time of writing, one person has been killed and 14 more injured in the incident which took place late Wednesday morning at a light rail station on the seam-line between the west and east of the city.

And like in previous incidents of this nature, the BBC has produced an appalling headline:

That the BBC has apportioned blame to an anonymous “driver” rather than an inanimate vehicle hardly constitutes any improvement on its previous efforts. Just when will the BBC learn?

UPDATE

The BBC has updated its headline:

The BBC usually refers to “East Jerusalem” when it wishes to portray that part of the city as Arab or Palestinian. Therefore the headline now implies the pedestrians involved in this attack are most likely Palestinians, which is certainly not the case.

UPDATE 2

And so it continues:

Is the BBC asking to be ridiculed? Draw your own conclusions.

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Tags: BBC, Distorting facts, headline, Jerusalem, terror attack

Simon Plosker

With over two decades of experience in various non-governmental organizations in the UK and Israel, Simon Plosker returned to HonestReporting in October 2022 as Editorial Director having previously been part of the organization’s management team from 2005 to 2020. Prior to his first spell at HonestReporting, Simon worked in Israel for NGO Monitor, BICOM, and served for a short period in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. He was Managing Editor of the Geneva-based NGO United Nations Watch for two years before moving back to the frontline defending Israel from media bias. Simon has a BSoc.Sc in International Studies and Political Science from the University of Birmingham and an MSc in History of International Relations from the London School of Economics. He immigrated to Israel in 2001 from London.

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